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Rice’s Diplomatic Skills Extend to Golf Course

PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — In the week after learning he was paired with Condoleezza Rice in the Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, Jason Bohn compiled questions and contemplated how to greet someone who had served as national security adviser and secretary of state. When he finally met Rice on Thursday morning, less than a half-hour before their tee time, her first words to him, he said, were, “Roll Tide.”

The greeting by Rice, a Birmingham, Ala., native, put Bohn, an Alabama graduate, instantly at ease. He spent their five-hour round at Pebble Beach Golf Links trying to do the same for Rice, who said she had played in pro-am events but never in front of so many people.

“Somebody asked me how did it compare to diplomacy,” Rice said, “and I said: ‘Well, I know how to do diplomacy. I’m not so sure about the golf course.’ But it was really fun.”

“I asked her if she would attend the Masters, and I told her that I felt like that’s got to be a really exciting event this year, and she had a big smile on her face and was very excited,” said Bohn, who lives in Georgia and has played in the Masters twice.

“I’m as interested in what the jacket looks like, from Augusta, where the logo’s placed,” Bohn added. “I mean, I’m really interested in that stuff. And I can tell you that’s one club that has thought of every detail, and I’m sure they included her in that conversation and wanted to know what she thought.”

Rice has membership privileges at two other high-profile clubs that were known in part for being exclusionary: Cypress Point and Shoal Creek. Is her aim to make golf more democratic?

Photo

Condoleezza Rice in the first round at Pebble Beach. She became a member at Augusta last August.Credit
Eric Risberg/Associated Press

“I’m just trying to play golf,” she said with a tight smile after combining with Bohn to shoot a two-under-par 70. “Just trying to play golf.”

She added, “They are great places, and I’m honored to be a member of all of them.”

Rice, 58, who plays to a 17 handicap, hit her best drives of the day on the first two holes. She drained a 30-foot putt for par on the second hole after a chip that drew applause from Bohn, who finished at one-under 71. It was one of three one-putts Rice recorded on the front side.

“I think she got a little nervous at times,” Bohn said. “But when she played her best, it seemed like, when she was the most nervous, like right out of the chute.”

After teeing her ball, Rice rarely required more than 20 seconds to hit. It was the same on the greens. Rice seldom took more than 15 seconds to putt.

“She doesn’t mess around, which is beautiful,” Bohn said. “She just hits it and goes and hits it again.”

Bohn said he and Rice talked about a variety of subjects: the United States Golf Association; the debate over anchored putting; everything but politics.

“She was an incredible person,” he said. “A lot different than what I might have expected, to be honest, in the sense that she’s real. What you see maybe from a political side you might not see as much of the realness that you want to. On the golf course, you see the real person.”

Photo

Condoleezza Rice, the former secretary of state, said she has played in pro-am events before, but never in front of so many people.Credit
Scott Halleran/Getty Images

On the par-5 sixth hole, which features a blind approach to the uphill green, Rice’s second shot landed on the side of the hill. After she advanced it several yards with her third, her fourth shot flew out of the grabby grass and hit a spectator standing behind the left gallery rope.

“Did I hit you?” Rice said, moving quickly to reach the woman, who had a bloody gash above the bridge of her nose. Her daughter was trying to use a pairings sheet as a bandage. “It was a bad shot. I’m really sorry.”

Rice knelt, handed the woman’s daughter a white towel to stanch the bleeding and held the woman’s right hand until first-aid personnel arrived. Before she headed to the green, she asked the daughter to call her with an update on her mother’s condition. Rice’s assistant, who was walking outside the ropes, slipped the daughter a piece of paper after Rice left.

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Rice’s game was never the same. She kept lifting up on her woods and irons, and her caddie, Kathryn Imrie, the assistant women’s golf coach at Stanford, where Rice teaches, spent more time adjusting her setup.

“We tried not to talk about it,” Imrie said. “Obviously, she was really concerned. And for it not to bother her probably would be tough. But I believe the woman is fine, which is great.”

On the 10th hole, Bohn caught up to Rice after she hit her drive, and they walked down the fairway together. “She was like, ‘I could tell I was a little hard on myself,’ ” he said. “And I was like, ‘Hey, we all are.’ ”

Rice’s tee shot on the par-3 17th landed short of the green, near the right grandstand, where a fan with a cellphone camera persisted in taking pictures despite a marshal’s repeated commands to stop. “It’s O.K.,” Rice quietly told him.

At the 18th tee, Bohn and Rice posed for an official photograph with Joe Ogilvie and his amateur partner, Randall Stephenson. “This is the first photo,” Bohn said, “we’re actually going to put on our mantel.”

A version of this article appears in print on February 8, 2013, on Page B9 of the New York edition with the headline: Rice’s Diplomatic Skills Extend to the Golf Course. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe